Nielsen Agrees To Acquire Visual IQ

Nielsen Holdings today entered into a definitive agreement to buy Visual IQ, an independent provider of multi-touch attribution (MTA) modeling of advertising on digital platforms.

With this transaction, Nielsen will acquire Visual IQ’s MTA software platform, along with the underpinning data, technology and intellectual property. The acquisition, Nielsen said, “will improve Nielsen’s ability to automatically ingest and process large datasets, as well as provide Nielsen with access to more proprietary big data from advertisers, publishers and retailers.”

The deal is expected to close in October 2017. Terms were not disclosed.

Visual IQ lets brands measure consumers across channels and devices “to deliver better, coordinated experiences by connecting advertising exposure with brand engagement, online conversion and in-store sales or other metrics,” Nielsen said. “The integration of Visual IQ with Nielsen’s current marketing effectiveness capabilities and products,” the company added, “will enable marketers to make better decisions about how they allocate cross-channel advertising and marketing spend for maximum effect on varying consumer segments.”

“Our acquisition of Visual IQ strengthens Nielsen’s powerful capabilities in the marketing effectiveness space, bringing speed and granularity at scale to ROI measurement,” said Matt Krepsik, Nielsen’s global head of product leadership for marketing ROI. “Visual IQ’s rich history of marketing attribution and digital intelligence combined with Nielsen’s gold-standard marketing effectiveness solutions will provide advertisers, publishers and agencies with a holistic platform that offers the transparency to optimize and improve the return on marketing investments.”

MTA and marketing mix modeling (MMM), which measure ROI at the individual person-level and the store level, respectively, are rapidly gaining traction, Nielsen said. “With an increasing amount of marketing budgets going to digital channels, brand advertisers continue to push for more accountability and for faster measures of impact on the dollars invested.” According to a recent study conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, The Outlook for Data 2017, cross-channel measurement and attribution are still top priorities for brand marketers.

“Our mission at Visual IQ has always been to drive marketing effectiveness with algorithmic attribution technology that allows customers to view tactical advertising performance through the lens of key audience segments,” said Manu Mathew, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “Our team is excited to be joining the Nielsen family as we integrate our capabilities with theirs, and provide increased value to clients and a more powerful combined solution to the industry as a whole.”

With this acquisition, Nielsen clients will gain access to Visual IQ’s marketing attribution expertise and a comprehensive software platform for analyzing customer profiles, in combination with tactical marketing performance across all channels and devices.